JP2010501918A - Home appliances - Google Patents

Abstract

  The present invention relates to a household electrical appliance including a reading device and at least one information card. The information card is readable by a reader and includes a code structure that controls the home appliance. The code structure consists of a conductive organic polymer.

Description

  The present invention relates to a domestic appliance comprising a reading device and at least one information card, wherein the information card is readable by the reading device and serves to control the home appliance It relates to home appliances including structure.

  Today, many home appliances are widely used, such as washing machines, clothes dryers, dishwashers, stoves, ovens, microwave ovens, etc., which are controlled by complex electronic systems. The user is in a position to individually influence a specific processing program by manually adjusting the processing time, temperature, and the like. When making such adjustments, the user needs to take into account not only the properties of the object to be treated (such as laundry and frozen pizza) but also additives such as detergents and water hardness. This adjustment may be throughout the duration of the entire process, or may be selected (for example, in the case of an oven, air circulates at 180 ° C for the first 10 minutes and then 210 ° C for 5 minutes). It is also possible to adjust the temperature).

  As a technique for facilitating such adjustment, Patent Document 1 discloses a configuration in which a barcode reader is connected to a kitchen device such as a microwave oven and the device is started by inserting the barcode. ing.

European Patent Application Publication No. 1 622 425

  However, an optical reader is required to read the bar code, but the manufacturing cost is high because it is a relatively complicated device. In addition, in the case of a simple bar code reader provided with a slot reader using a CCD element, there is a problem that the optical element is very dirty due to paper dust. The actual barcode may also become unreadable due to overwriting, dust, adhesive labels, and the like.

  Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a code structure of an information card for controlling home appliances that can be read using a simple and inexpensive reading device. It is also possible to manufacture an information card, in particular its code structure, in a simple and inexpensive way.

  This object is solved by the features of the invention as defined in claim 1.

  The home appliance according to the present invention comprises a reader and at least one information card, the information card comprising a code structure that is readable by the reader and serves to control the home appliance. Here, the cord structure is made of a conductive organic polymer.

  Inexpensive readers that read the code structure by inductive coupling, capacitive coupling, ohmic coupling, etc. are particularly possible through the code structure. It is also possible to print the code structure, and in this connection, in particular using the mass printing method.

  The construction of the invention further forms the subject of the dependent claims.

  According to a preferred embodiment, the information card is composed of two flexible substrate layers, which can be formed in particular from paper or film. The code structure in this case can be made invisible by being embedded between two substrate layers. As a result, the information card can be freely formed or printed on its upper surface and / or lower surface. Examples of conductive organic polymers suitable for use include PEDOT or PANI.

  Compared with a bar code, the code structure of the conductive organic polymer can have the advantage that reliable readability can be obtained due to the structure in which the code structure is protected between the two substrate layers.

It is a block diagram which shows a household appliance with an information card. It is a longitudinal cross-sectional view which follows the AA line of FIG. It is sectional drawing which follows the BB line of FIG.

  Other advantages and configurations of the present invention will be described in detail below based on the drawings.

  FIG. 1 shows a home appliance 1 and a reader 2. The reading device 2 is integrated with the home appliance or formed as an external device that can be connected to the home appliance. The connection can be made by cable or wireless connection. The information card 3 can be inserted into the reading device 2. The information card 3 is shown in more detail in FIGS. 2 and 3 and includes a code structure 4 that serves to control the home appliance 1 to achieve a specific purpose.

  The information card 3 preferably consists of two flexible substrate layers 5, 6 and can be formed in particular of paper or film. As can be seen from FIG. 2, the code structure 4 is advantageously embedded between the two substrate layers 5 and 6 to make it invisible. The bonding can be performed by a method such as bonding. The code structure 4 is formed of a conductive organic polymer such as PEDOT or PANI.

  When the conductive organic polymer is manufactured using a mass printing method, in particular, a relief printing method, an intaglio printing method, a lithographic printing method, etc., an information card can be manufactured particularly inexpensively.

  Since the code structure is embedded between the two substrates, the upper and / or lower sides 6a, 5a of the information card can be formed or printed as desired, leaving an area for the code structure as in the case where it is not embedded. There is no need to keep it.

  For reading the code structure, various types of reading devices 2 can be considered. For example, particularly conceivable is inductive coupling or capacitive coupling, but ohmic contact is also possible.

  It is an object of the present invention to make it possible in a simple and inexpensive way to read the information required for home appliance programming directly into the system without the need for manual intervention. For this purpose, information is put on an information card provided together with a product (for example, frozen pizza or detergent) from the manufacturer. By inserting this information card, the stored information is automatically transferred to the home appliance control system.

  An information card having a code structure that can be printed by a large-scale printing process is particularly attractive to a manufacturer because it can be held at a cost within a practical range as a daily product.

  The information card may be bundled with the product (frozen food) as an individual card, or may be integrated with a package around the product. In that case, the card is inserted into the reader after being separated from the package around the product.

  In the case of a washing machine, the manufacturer can bundle a plurality of information cards for various programs. Further, the user can select a card of a program to be normally used. In this way, the appliance can be activated very quickly and easily.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Home appliance 2 Reading apparatus 3 Information card 4 Code structure 5, 6 Flexible substrate layer

Claims (9)

  A home appliance (1) comprising a reading device (2) and at least one information card (3), the information card being readable by the reading device and controlling the home appliance A household appliance characterized in that the cord structure (4) comprises a conductive organic polymer.   System according to claim 1, characterized in that the information card (3) comprises at least one, preferably two flexible substrate layers (5, 6) made of paper or film.   System according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the code structure (4) is embedded invisible between two substrate layers.   4. System according to claim 2 or 3, characterized in that the information card (3) is printed on its upper side and / or on its lower side.   System according to any one of claims 1 to 4, characterized in that the information card (3) is a flexible structure.   The system according to any one of claims 1 to 5, characterized in that the conductive organic polymer is PEDOT.   The system according to claim 1, wherein the conductive organic polymer is PANI.   The reading device (2) is configured to read the code structure (4) by inductive coupling, capacitive coupling or ohmic coupling with the information card (3). The system according to item 1.   9. System according to any one of claims 1 to 8, characterized in that the conductive organic polymer is produced by a mass printing method, in particular a relief printing method, an intaglio printing method or a lithographic printing method.

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